UPC: 9780061671418

Release Date: 4/6/2010

Main description:

In an earlier century, Queen Victoria made a Faustian bargain, signing London and all its souls away to a nefarious, inhuman entity. Now, generations later, the bill has finally come due. . . .

An amiable, unambitious London file clerk, Henry Lamb leads an unremarkable life—until the day he learns he's expected to assume the covert responsibilities of his universally despised, now comatose grandfather. London is at war, and a shadowy organization known (to a very few) as the Directorate wishes to recruit Henry to the cause. All he has to do is find "the girl," save the world from the monster Leviathan, and defeat the unspeakable evil lurking in the cellar of 10 Downing Street: the serial-slaying schoolboy twins known as the Domino Men.

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“A comic extravaganza, deftly plotted, fiendishly clever, and wonderfully funny. Jonathan Barnes combines a love of Victorian absurdity worthy of Edward Gorey with the surrealistic invention of a London-obsessed Garcia Marquez. This parody penny-dreadful is one of the classiest entertainments I’ve read in a long, long time.”

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“A fantastic novel.”

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“A wonderfully original concoction of grotesque humour and sparkling prose.”

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“Another remarkable outing, an infectious blend of wit, wonder, and the bizarre presented with remarkable style. This is literary fiction for the genre fiction set, or possibly the other way around...genuinely shocking and inventive.”

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“Barnes’s second novel, a compelling supernatural thriller, shows that his impressive debut, The Somnambulist, was no fluke. …Thanks to Barnes’s evocative prose, readers will easily suspend disbelief. Those who enjoy the grafting of fantasy elements onto contemporary urban landscapes will be more than satisfied.”

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“If you only read one black comedy with the brains and labyrinthine twists of Vedantic hair-splitting, make it this one....a gripping yarn.”

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“Kudos Barnes for another winner that is as funny as it is creepy, as thought provoking as it is entertaining.”

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“Macabre wit and stylistic panache. Parliament should immediately pass a law requiring Barnes to write a sequel.”

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“Nothing about Barnes’s follow-up to The Somnabulist is predictable....The grotesque fantasy world is a riot.”

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“Old school entertainment in the penny-dreadful tradition that almost succeeds in being as sublime as it is ridiculous.”

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“Sneaky, cheeky, and dark in the best possible way, Jonathan Barnes’ massively entertaining The Somnambulist manages to make the familiar daringly unfamiliar. I enjoyed the heck out of this novel.”

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“Strange, outrageous, and wonderful … There is much that is strange, magical, and darkly hilarious about this book … An original and monumentally inventive piece of work by a writer still in his 20s. Barnes seems to leave himself room for a sequela consummation devoutly to be wished.”

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“The best fantasy novel of the year.”

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“This promising debut subverts its 19th-century predecessors amusingly. Inventive and often witt“Unmatched life and verve.”